The Cutter - It started as an obsession with hacking hair from women's heads. It ended with murder. Michael Litchfield

of head injury suggested impacts from an implement having a relatively small striking face, but delivering high impact energy, for example, some form of hammer.

       The lacerations and associated crust-type fractures to the left-hand were typical of defence injuries, for example interposing her hand as a hammer-blow was delivered to her head. At least ten lacerating blows had been delivered to her head.

       The relative lack of bleeding associated with these injuries suggested that these were inflicted after she was already dead.

      Heather had fought to defend herself, desperately trying to fend off the ferocious hammer-blows as they rained on her skull. Her slayer had then committed the atrocity of sadistic mutilation after she had died.

      Dealing with the time of death for the police, Dr Anscombe stated that the axillary body temperature at 9.05pm on the day of the murder provided evidence that Heather died ‘considerably nearer to 8.40am’ when she arrived home from taking the children to school, ‘than 4.00pm’, the approximate time that her body was discovered.

      The doctor believed that the attack, including dragging Heather into the bathroom and mutilating her, would have taken only a few minutes.

      Geoffrey Robinson, a forensic scientist and expert in the examination of crime scenes, visited Heather’s home before her body was removed. He concluded:

       The blood-spatter in the workroom, adjacent to the patio door, pointed to this being the general area in which Heather Barnett sustained beating injuries to her head.

       The location of the spatter indicated that its origin would place Heather Barnett’s head close to the floor. In other words, she was not standing upright when she received the blows which caused the spatter.

      Based on the location of spatter in that area of the room, Mr Robinson estimated that Heather’s head was about three feet from the floor when the hammer-blows crushed into her skull.

       Since the wounds were predominantly towards the back of her head, it is likely that she was generally facing backwards to her attacker and towards the patio door at the time.

       Heather Barnett was probably dragged from the attack location, through the workroom, the living room, across the second hallway and into the bathroom. Further injuries were then inflicted upon Heather. The absence of any bloodstaining, due to artery damage, suggests that she was dead by the time these injuries were inflicted.

       It was likely that once in the bathroom, the fly-zip of Heather Barnett’s jeans was unfastened and the material either side of the zip moved to expose the front panel of her knickers. There was evidence that a fabric covered them, possibly a hand, brought into contact with the inside surface of the front panel of those knickers.

       Once in the bathroom, a hank of hair was placed in the palm of her right hand as it lay over her abdomen and some of her own head hair was cut. The evidence suggests that the killer then left the bathroom and re-entered the living room, before leaving the premises by the front door (which was at the side of the house, of course).

       The action of dragging Heather into the bathroom, after she had sustained bleeding injuries to the top and back of her head, was almost certain to have caused the attacker’s upper and lower garments, including footwear, to become stained by dripped and ‘contact’ blood.

       It was also possible, but less certain, that during the beating assault some blood drops would have spattered on to the attacker, possibly on to hands and face, as well as clothing.

      Another forensic specialist, Andrew Sweeting, reported, ‘From the footwear-mark patterns found in blood in the bathroom, it seems likely that the attacker was wearing footwear in the size-range approximately 9–11.’

      Of course, much of this harvesting of forensic evidence was spread over an intense but lengthy period of activity, extending into months.

      On the Wednesday, the day after the children returned to their family home, Terry bravely agreed to be interviewed and filmed by video recorder. The interview was conducted compassionately by Helen Davis, a specialist police officer. He repeated the events of the previous day, from the time he and his sister were driven to school by their mother. Still in shock, he had to relive the nightmare.

      He described pitifully how his sister had gone ‘absolutely ballistic’ on entering the bathroom. He said, ‘I saw her [Heather] lying on her back and all the blood, and shouted, “Mum! Mum! Mum!” He had to drag his sister out of the house and into the street, and almost simultaneously saw neighbours Fiamma Marsango and Danilo Restivo getting out of their car. Of Mr Restivo, he said, ‘He grabbed me and my sister and we both started crying.’

      * * *

      Heather Barnett was born on 29 August 1954 and grew up in Sturminster Newton, a remote region in north Dorset, a rural backwater that for many people, especially those living in the ‘progressive’ south of the county, seemed to be trapped in a time-warp. Heather’s father owned an ironmonger’s shop in which Heather, as a girl, regularly helped out for extra pocket-money.

      Years later, when an adult, she moved south to Bournemouth, which for those from sleepy, darkest Dorset, was often looked upon as the land of opportunity, where people grew rich. There, Heather embarked on a curtain-making course at a local college.

      After getting her diploma, she made a living as a self-employed curtain-maker, working mainly from home. But for a while she did rent a small workshop in Winton, a neighbourhood about half a mile away from her Capstone Road home. She was successful almost from the very beginning and steadily built up a solid client base.

      Heather was soon in a relationship with a man called David Marsh, who moved in with her. Marsh was the father of both her children, but they parted when Caitlin was less than two years old.

      * * *

      Heather’s relatives undertook everything humanly possible to comfort and support Terry and Caitlin. Social Services had a significant input, but the children had suffered the brutal loss of their mother, one who had been so vibrant, and one who had devoted her life to their care and had always been there for them. A huge responsibility rested, therefore, on the shoulders of Social Services and the children’s extended families.

      Remarkably for that time of day, neighbours had neither seen nor heard anything untoward. One of the first questions the police were anxious to have answered was the means by which the killer entered the premises. There was no sign of a break-in at the front or rear. A forced entry at around 9.00am on a weekday could not possibly have gone unnoticed in such an exposed location. Very quickly they concluded that Heather had opened the door voluntarily to her killer or he had been in possession of a key. This was a starting point. And very soon they were learning from a neighbour that about a week earlier Heather had mentioned that her house keys had gone missing. This had troubled her, apparently, because she did not like the idea that a stranger might be in possession of the key to her front door. The consolation was that there was nothing on the key ring that identified Heather or her address. ‘What niggled her most of all was how she came to lose the keys,’ said the neighbour. ‘She was always so very careful about those kinds of things; careful about everything, in fact. She was annoyed with herself for being careless, but she wasn’t too bothered in the end because she couldn’t see how anyone with the keys would know which locks they fitted.’

      On 20 November, 12 days after the murder, the interior of Heather’s flat was subjected to Luminol testing, a technique for uncovering faint traces of blood. Luminol reacts with blood and the chemical reaction causes any normally invisible remnant to emit light for a short time, in the form of a blue luminescence. This enables otherwise invisible blood traces to be observed in conditions of low light and the results can be photographed.

      Expert Philip Webster summarised his findings as follows:

       The diffuse, fine, latent spray pattern developed on the carpet